Free for a Fee

In recent weeks, there’s been a lot of talk about this outfit called Righthaven, a sort of online copyright enforcer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The enterprise won a key ruling in a Nevada federal court on Thursday.

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The content in this post was found at http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/09/03/vegas-baby-ruling-a-possible-boon-to-copyright-troll-suits/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wsj%2Flaw%2Ffeed+%28WSJ.com%3A+Law+Blog%29 and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

[Post by Venkat]

Jagex Ltd. v. Impulse Software, et al., Case No. 10-10216-NMG (D. Mass.) (Aug. 16, 2010)

Jagex operates “Runescape,” a popular and free online role-playing game. The game has over 130 million accounts, and users spend a significant amount of time “rising through the levels of the game”:

as of October, 2009, the three highest-ranking players had each spent an average of approximately 20,000 hours [!] involved in a game, e.g., 50 hours per week for almost eight years.

Impulse (along with the individual defendants) operate websites offering “cheat” tools - i.e., software that allows users to advance their characters without actually playing the game. Defendants’ software downloads a copy of Runescape and “uses a process called ‘reflection’ to examine the game’s internal operation which is normally hidden from users.” The software then “plays the game for its owner while she is away from her computer.”

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The content in this post was found at http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/09/runescape_publi_1.htmand was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke went to Nashville yesterday to address a symposium on intellectual property enforcement, and he threw down the gauntlet: the Obama administration will find, board, and scuttle digital pirate ships, and the SS Copyright is going to get a new coat of armored plating.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/obama-administration-piracy-is-flat-unadulterated-theft.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Movie studios are extending their efforts to take down sites that offer pirated material, with a new lawsuit targeting an advertising company that provides services to such sites. Warner Bros. and Disney have teamed up to sue Triton Media, accusing the company of both contributory and induced copyright infringement because Triton helps to keep the sites alive by providing them with advertising and referral income.

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/studios-sue-ad-shop-for-pirate-sites.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rssand was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

The MPEG Licensing Association—the group responsible for handling the necessary patent licensing for use of MPEG video codec standards—has announced that it will not charge royalties for AVC/H.264 encoded video that is made available to view via the Internet for free. The group earlier this year had extended its limited moratorium on licensing fees for free Internet video until the end of 2015.

The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/08/mpeg-la-counters-google-webm-with-permanent-royalty-moratorium.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rssand was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.